Open Educational Resources at Umass Amherst Seeking Alternatives to High-Cost Textbooks Marilyn Billings, Scholarly Communication & Digital Initiatives Librarian Charlotte Roh, Scholarly Communication Resident Librarian ACRL Scholarly Communication New England 2014 Who here knows what this is? And has somehow been involved?

Why Open Education? The cost of textbooks has gone up and everyone is worried about it. Last year the Dept. of Ed put out announcements regarding the need to shift to digital resources to 1) help alleviate the cost of textbooks and 2) prepare our students to be technology literate. And I can use these 2 images two demonstrate these points because of fair use. “I stopped buying textbooks my second semester here.” - Marieme T., UMass Amherst Class of 2014

Seeking Solutions The Provost’s Office and the University Libraries of the University of Massachusetts Amherst launched the Open Education Initiative (OEI) in the Spring of 2011. The OEI is a faculty incentive program (a small grant) that encourages: the creation of new teaching materials, the use of library subscription materials, or the use of existing open (free) information resources to support our students’ learning. Funded through both the Provost’s Office and the Libraries. Open education resources are resources that are open and free to the public. For the OEI, we tweaked things so that it includes library subscription materials as well.

OEI Workshops / Consultations Workshops reviewing available OERs and library-licensed resources Individual consulting sessions for faculty with Scholarly Communication and subject liaison librarians, IT staff and others as needed Topics covered: library databases, OER availability, copyright and licensing issues, accessibility concerns, creating a sustainable curriculum with OERs, managing resources in the LMS, assistance with creation of new content

OEI Grant: Faculty Proposals Basic course information Number of students Current textbook(s) and cost Anticipated implementation date Narrative (500 words) Outcomes Sustainability Challenges Assessment The current application form can be seen at http://goo.gl/forms/NRH9lQTF2L The faculty proposal is very straightforward. It addresses quite simply the cost of the textbook per student and what the course is trying to accomplish with these resources. Really, these are things that any professor considers when thinking of course materials. Photo credit: Derek Jensen aka FireChickenTA99

Success Stories Faculty School/College Course Proposed Savings Per Student Proposed Course Savings Actual Savings as of Spring 2014 Miliann Kang College of Humanities & Fine Arts Women's Studies 187: Gender, Sexuality and Culture $75 $22,500 $45,450 Charlie Schweik College of Natural Sciences Natural Resource Conservation 592: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems $50 $1,500 $12,400   Pam Trafford Isenberg School of Management School of Management 797: Financial Reporting for Decision Making $200 $8,000 $13,200 Patricia Bianconi Chemistry 342: Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory $235 $10,575 $34,075 Daiheng Ni College of Engineering Civil & Environmental Engineering 520: Traffic Flow Theory $150 $3,150 $6,000 Nicholas Reich School of Public Health and Health Sciences Public Health 697: Introduction to Statistical Computing and Data Visualization $130 $3,900 $2,730 Barbara Roche College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Journalism 397E: Entrepreneurial Journalism $100 $1,900 Patricia Gorman Honors College Honors 390W: Irish Writers and Cultural Contexts $65 $1,625 $2,145

Professor Hossein Pishro-Nik Course: Electrical and Computer Engineering 314: Introduction to Probability and Random Processes Cost of Regular Textbook: $143 Proposed Cost Savings: $14,630 Created: Introduction to Probability Semesters Taught: 8 as of Spring 2014 Total Enrollment: 468 Total Savings: $43,329+ as it has been used in other courses as well This is just for the initial cost savings, for just one class. I am currently in the midst of assessment, and one of the big things we are asking is how many classes have been taught using the open education resources using the OEI grant. Each of these faculty members have taught the classes in the proposal more than once, so we can actually double the savings for these four people. [Click on Hossein’s picture for an example of his work.]

Student Advocacy http://masspirgstudents.org/campaigns/ma/make-textbooks-affordable

Partners Providing OEI Support Peer-Review by: CTFD IT Program faculty Librarians OIT Consultation with partners prior to award Faculty Award Letter Liaison Assignment

Workshops Copyright & licensing (Creative Commons) Accessibility & sustainability Consulting Liaison outreach to faculty Finding resources Creating new content Access to Resources Liaisons, Circulation and E reserves for library materials Licensing materials for class use Partners Center for Teaching & Faculty Development OIT Academic Computing Center for Educational Software Development Library at Work Implementation required that the whole library work together. It’s been really amazing for me personally to learn how different parts of the library are involved in an initiative like this. I think we are all invested in making the lives of students better. [Click on image to get to libguide and list of recipients.]

Results can be used for improvement and marketing. Assessment Methods Objectives Surveys Qualitative interviews Enrollment numbers Was there a cost savings? Did students learn effectively? Did faculty implement the parameters of the grant? Results can be used for improvement and marketing.

Lessons Learned: What Worked Value of mini grants Meet faculty where they are Capitalize on your strengths Articulate value of existing library services

Copyright and Author Rights Two basic questions from faculty How do I protect my copyright on the works I create? How do I make sure I’m not infringing on the copyright of others? Answer: It depends. How do you want your work to be used? What is it that you want out of this experience? Do you want other educators to be able to use it? Do you want to commercialize it? Do you want attribution? Creative Commons Licensing Process

Open Access and Fair Use Check the CC license to see how the creator would like something to be used. Exercise your fair use rights as academic educators and researchers. http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/files/2009/10/fairusechecklist.pdf

Best Practices for Online Instruction Mix and match content from multiple sources to best suit your learning objectives For YouTube Videos use the Mashup tool Embed non-YouTube videos when possible For e-books with a detailed table of contents, provide web links to specific book sections Add short PDF documents as Files to open in the content frame Add long documents as Web Links and set to Open in New Window Review of best practices

OER for Online instructors: Sample 1 For those familiar with BB Learn, you will recognize this as the instructor view of a Learning Module. I will go back and forth between two sample courses, this one on the Philosophy of logic …

OER for Online instructors: Sample 2 . . . and this one on Developmental Psychology. Marilyn's Open Education Initiative is primarily geared toward traditional face to face faculty. The eLearning group in Continuing and Professional Education sought to promote OER for online instructors. We held face to face and webinar workshops, demonstrating how to locate resources and build them into Blackboard Learn. Our goal was to showcase that OER is a win win for both instructors and students, providing rich, ready to use course materials.

For YouTube Videos use the Mashup tool For YouTube Videos such as this short clip use the Mashup tool. It allows students to view content without leaving the course. There is an option to expand to full YouTube screen if desired

Connexions: http://cnx.org Similarly, the psych course got materials from connextions. There is a YouTube MashUp a web link to a brain model, and a Ted Talk.

<Embed> non-YouTube videos For non- YouTube video content embed when possible for a similar experience. Like the YouTube MashUp it plays in the content frame, but can be expanded to full screen.

Mix and match to meet teaching objectives The best part about OER is that you are not locked into any one set of resources. Both modules were missing substantive readings. For the philosophy module I went for a text from Project Gutenberg.

Many eBooks have detailed Table of Contents eBooks often have a detailed table of contents with hyperlinked section headings.

Provide Web Link to specific book section In the learning module you can then provide direct links to the exact section students are expected to read.

Use institution databases when available Each institution will have a different set of databases, but most will have at least some. While these are not OER, database resources are still available to students free of charge. UMass Amherst subscribes to CogNet Library.

“Psychologists in Word and Image” is available on Amazon, but why have students pay for it when they can obtain content for free from the library?

In fact, in my Developmental Psychology example, I only needed one chapter of the text on Jean Piaget.

Add short PDF’s as files This is a short reading with just over a page of text. Added as a file to Blackboard it displays in the content frame for students to read. Students can still be downloaded and save the file to their computers.

Add long PDF’s as links This is an example of a Master’s thesis on developmental psychology available on Scholarworks. It is over 50 pages long so students are not going to read it in the course content frame. For long PDF’s it is best to add then as web links set to open in a new window. Students can then read in the browser, or download and mark up with Adobe Acrobat.